Water in the garden offers a wonderful element of movement and sound. It can be hard a stream look good, and sometimes the challenge is even greater. When the water is a man-made affair, more utilitarian, more a ditch, than anything else, water and uneven edges often equals scruffy!

Gardening near the coast presents a special challenge, and one that New Zealand gardeners cope with especially well! Many of us live on or near the the coast, so salt wind and beach gardens are not just something that weekends are made of.

Climate and conditions vary widely, and different plants will succeed in these various areas, but some coastal toughies will be found in gardens almost from North Cape to Bluff.

Courtyard GardensCourtyard gardens often seem to be the simplest gardens to design, yet these seemingly small, simple spaces have a number challenges to overcome for the result to be successful.

Understanding how colour affects the viewer and how we can manipulate it in the border brings a whole new repertoire to the gardener.

The colour rules that help when you are planning your garden. Not rules to be followed, for rules are made to be broken, especially in our gardens where we must all follow our own star and make our own choices.

Learning to Manipulate Colour

Chelsea Inspiration 2003

A mass of flowers – inspired by wildflowers but definitely in the garden - was the predominant inspiration running through this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. The wilderness areas were still there, but more gardens showed garden plantings with an abandoned or woodland air. The Best Garden in Show was the Laurent Perrier garden designed by Tom Stuart-Smith, a flowery woodland planting under dogwoods (Cornus kousa), juxtaposed against a minimalist formal pool and backed by a plain slate wall.

The colour scheming at Chelsea is always remarkably homogenous, with the trend colour for the year being found in most gardens. The Laurent Perrier garden followed this year’s mauves and blues, yellows and creams but lacked the deep reds and maroon found in many other gardens. Plants lit up the dappled shade beneath the four dogwoods , with white through blue into yellow and lime from geraniums, foxgloves, tiarella, tellima, paeonies, Solomon’s Seal, Siberian iris, thalictrum, sweet rocket, and aquilegias.

Garden Style

Designing in Dry ClimatesWe all dream of living somewhere warm, hot even, where rain doesn’t spoil the day or the evening barbeque. Those who live in such climates, however, know just how challenging gardening without rain can be. But adapting our garden design leaves us with huge scope for wonderful, vibrant gardens in dry climates.

Containers have role to play throughout the year. In fact, they have even more impact in the months when the garden is less colourful, when structure, form and foliage are more telling and play a larger part in the garden.